Graham為德國作家Herman Hesse的著作《Narcissus and Goldmund》（那齊士與哥德蒙， 又譯作知與愛）新版寫了一篇序文，刊登在這期的Times上。我還沒看過雜誌，不知道確切 詳情為何，Times的網站倒是有序文全文XD http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-2268767,00.html STEPPING OUT WITH HERMANN Graham Coxon came across Hermann Hesse's story of a runaway medieval monk when he was a student. It has become a template for his life. At 17 I was wide-eyed and thirsty. I was studying general art and design, a sponge determined to absorb everything I could. All new experiences rang with significance — the pictures, the films, the books, the music, the photographs, they all filled my world with sense-heightening magic. I humbly held artists of any kind in very high esteem, marvelling at their work. I would walk the streets of Colchester dressed in overalls and tweed, smelling of turpentine and oilpaint, much to the despair of my mother. I was a proud student, an honoured aesthete. One teacher made a particular impression on me and the rest of my group, although to many it was a bad one. She appeared from nowhere and seduced us into defining ourselves and, in doing so, unwittingly split our group into factions — or at least accelerated the process. What she did was so simple and playful, but left me feeling as though I had undergone an important personal and creative development. She stacked tables and chairs to the ceiling, climbed up and hung up a roll of tape with string. She then encouraged us to draw it as it swung around the room. This split the group: the precious, graphic-design types rolled their eyes, silently mouthed curses, felt for their fine-nibbed pens and bemoaned the prospect of another two hours with a teacher who was so obviously a weirdo; but to others, those of a looser nature — myself included — this eccentrically dressed, enthusiastic, beaming woman immediately became a heroine, and we slashed at our huge sheets of paper with our sticks of charcoal. The already cynical graphic artists thought her teaching pointless and undignified, but the fine artists loved her and admired her unselfconscious energy and enthusiasm. You were either for her or against her. She neither patronised us nor intellectualised, and so created an environment in which we began to see the making of marks on paper as a highly personal, sensual or spiritual act. Late one morning I was sitting drinking coffee and smoking one of those very, very first cigarettes, when she smiled over at me and came to join me at the table. “There's a book you should read, Graham, if you haven't already. I think you would love it. It’s called Narcissus and Goldmund.” The title alone made me imagine it might be heavy going, so I found myself avoiding the book for quite a while. I don't know why I didn't at least give it a go. Maybe I wanted to preserve the feeling of excitement; of knowing that something beautiful and hugely important was just around the corner, but felt it so intimidating that I was loath to quit the comfort of loitering in an adjacent alley. Maybe I felt so flattered that a woman I greatly admired thought me mature enough or intelligent enough to contemplate recommending such a book. I am sure she recognised that I was more an empty vessel than a full one and wanted to contribute a little to filling me up, so maybe I was afraid that I would leave the book unfinished or find it boring and in so doing fail my new teacher. Maybe, maybe, maybe... In any case, time went by, and I left the college and moved on to take a degree in fine art at Goldsmiths. The book had been itching away at me for about three years by the time I finally bought it, turned to the first page and, breathing in deeply, took the plunge. I need not have worried. I didn’t find the book at all difficult and quickly became immersed. Finally, my relationship with Narcissus and Goldmund grew even deeper — I was asked to write a foreword, something I didn't feel in the least bit qualified to do so. I never studied philosophy and I don't consider myself a “thinker” — but I am an asker, an asker of big questions, and always felt that there was more to learn and more to experience right from the beginnings of my impressionable adolescence right up to now and my impressionable late youth. The clean simplicity of Hesse's writing offers a vast space in which to push your weightless mind and, although you can see the Universe between the lines, he never forces you to venture too deeply but leaves it to you as to how far in you might like to travel. This is not just a story, it is a gentle arm around the shoulder. It gets us off the hook, reassures us that there is still time, that surrender is possible even if it is a surrender to ourselves, that no matter how recklessly we bolt out into the unknown, the journey home is a brief one. It lets us know that even when we become lost in the crazed volatility of what we think of as freedom, reaching the very edge of our own flat world, gazing petrified over the edge at the black expanse of our own demise, we are but a change of hardened heart from the innocence of our beginnings, from peace. We see that outward journeys are easy — essential, if somewhat desperate assertions of our will and independence. After all, we have first to be filled with something for an inward journey to be possible. This book made me wonder just how far down the dangerous roads of our early adult lives does the pull of a simpler life begin to tug at our sleeves. When does the overbearing din of hollow seduction suddenly fall on deaf ears? Does the balance need to be addressed? If so, then when, finally, does an existence free of clutter prove more desirable than one of chaos? I think we can all see ourselves in Goldmund. His experiences can relate sharply to our own; they melt and shape themselves into the mould of our own lives. Life and the material world was designed to seduce, and we are designed to be seduced by it. We career, uncompromisingly, through our early lives, proud of our strength and youth but never treasuring it. Maybe that's how it should be, that we squander it if only to mourn it later when we don't feel so invincible and have to savour each day of our late adulthood. Perhaps this may be why, as we get older, we like more what we see when we close our eyes. Could this be God's way of making the transition into the next life a smoother, less traumatic one? This book seems to have proved itself to be a template to me. It has a perfect and gentle tension and familiar dynamic shape. It's a book in which you can plot your own progress and plan your own happy ending. It has been a source of great inspiration throughout the 16 years its words have been rooted in my head. It is a book that you can never grow out of because you grow into it, and it softens around you like a good old pair of shoes. It is not without its tragedy and its blood and its guts, but shows this aspect of life to be as much a valid part of the journey as happiness. Narcissus and Goldmund is a well from which we can draw limitless emotional strength, and I am not ashamed to say that I am extremely jealous that you might just be reading it for the first time. c Graham Coxon, 2006 Graham所寫的序文將會被放在新版的N&G中:) --

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